Andrew Little
ACC Spokesperson

21 February 2012

ACC: Kiwis ripped off for past 3 years

ACC Minister Judith Collins has admitted that hard-working Kiwis have been overcharged for the past three years by reducing levies today, says Labour’s ACC spokesperson Andrew Little.

“Judith Collins says that ACC’s surplus last year of $3.5 billion justifies the decrease,” Andrew Little said. “It certainly does, but why hasn’t the Government ended this rip-off of Kiwis long before now.

“ACC has never made a surplus of anything like $3.5 billion before. It has routinely made surpluses of around $1 billion and steadily built up its reserves.

“The massive increase in last year’s surplus has more to do with the unnecessary increase in levies in 2009 that has massively increased income,” Andrew Little said.

“The Government justified the increase then on the grounds that the value of ACC’s reserves had gone down and the value of long term liabilities had gone up.

“But exactly the same thing was shown up in yesterday’s Crown accounts (ACC long term liabilities up $0.75 billion; value of reserves down $134 million),” Andrew Little said.

“The Government contrived a financial crisis in 2009 to justify privatisation of most of ACC, and it’s now obvious there never was any crisis and its privatisation policy has always been purely ideological.

“New Zealand businesses and wage and salary earners can feel angry that they have been overcharged for three years.

“It’s been a rip-off from beginning to end,” Andrew Little said.

ENDS

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